Side quest designer

[darkgod]

Hello

I added a bunch of new zones(the arid wastes of Erúan, the Rak'shor Pride, Mount Doom) for beta 5, along with quests to advance the story.
I have still quite a few ideas of quests and zones to get up to the end game but I have not much in the way of side quests.

So if anybody have ideas about good side quests, either randomly gained through and encounter or in a town/...
A good description would be the quest ,how to gain it, what it involves and what are the reward (money, items, skills, ...).
Be wild!
(If you want to try your hand at actually coding them it's fine too :> )

[Taxorgian]

An easy Bree quest:

There is something north of the city that is ruining the crops from below the ground! Find and eradicate the problem.

Multiple rats/rodents in the level
Boss: The Shimmering Rat (hits for poison damage)
Reward: The Rat's Claw (tool)
+1 Dex
Digging tool
The bladed claws attached to the Shimmering Rat seem to be able to cut through almost anything! But it's too disgusting to actually hold in your hands.

I don't know if the game is going to do anything with the silmarils, but at least the one in the water should still exist on Arda (I don't know if the Arkenstone is presumed to be the silmaril thrown into lava or not). If Angolwen is trying to forestall the end of magic, that might be something a player is sent to find? It should be a nasty dungeon: sea trolls, orc archers, the boss might be Osse himself?

[Baker]

How about a classic? Talking to the townsfolk, you find out that the town is being plagued by a vampire who lives in one of the buildings. You have to talk to the other townsfolk to figure out which building is his mansion and then fight your way through the vampire's undead servant before confronting their master.

Once you've reached him he offers you to pay you off if you will just leave and forget the whole thing, which ends the quest and dumps you outside. Alternately you can refuse and try to kill him, which means a pretty tough fight because he is loaded with defensive gear and he's a lot stronger than his slaves.

The first answer gives you an appropriate amount of gold and a trinket that is appropriate to the class (Rogue types might get a vampiric dagger while Mages get one of his defensive amulets or so) while fighting him will give you all the stuff with which he protected himself, including elemental resistances and magical +DEF/AC items. Also it could make for a possible trigger to unlock the vampire race, once that gets implemented.

I figure level 15-20 would be appropriate for this, but I think this is a situation where leveled content would work particularly well. Gear would have to be adjusted accordingly, of course.

[darkgod]

Thanks

More more !

[Burb Lulls]

Kay, here's my ideas for a couple of early-game quests...

For the first, I'm thinking of two NPCs in Bree, rival hunters or the like. One is collecting troll scalps, the other is collecting skulls, and both want help. Your character may accept to help one of them, which allows their prospective item to drop from trolls in the Trollshaws or skeletons in Amon Sul. Once you've handed in enough items (say, fifteen) you're given a small, early-game reward. I was thinking an ego weapon that's either effective against trolls or undead, depending on who you helped.

Notes:

• I know nobody likes quest items clogging things up. The scalps/skulls drop for the duration of the quest only!

• Do slays on weapons still exist in ToME? If not, maybe one reward could boost strength and the other dexterity, etc.

• Also, perhaps the quest can give your characters a weapon suiting your character's weapon masteries - if they have any.

As for the second, I was thinking it was about time to go back to the classic ToME starting area - The Barrow Downs.

"Even with the banishing of the wights from their barrows, the surrounding lands hardly became a popular place to visit. Now, however, malevolent spirits seem to be massing once again. Could the wights be returning to wreak their terrible vengeance?"

In a word, no . But what would be awaiting adventurers in this small two-or-three level (yet random - don't want fixed levels this early in the game) dungeon would be an amateur necromancer and his undead minions. As a parallel to the fighter-based rewards of my first idea, this quest could just drop a simple ego robe for a budding magic-user, or maybe even a suitably underwhelming unique. Necromancer's Robes or the like. Whisperingly, it could also be a handy area for people desperate to unlock the undead classes to get their collective worlds rocked...

An' that's it. Wow, I haven't been here for ages, but something like ToME 4 warrants an un-lurking.

[Gwai]

Another possible quest. This one inspired by a class of monsters that wasn't in ToME2.

NPC: "I fear we have awakened something. The people who live at the outskirts of town keep disappearing and their houses are found crushed and destroyed, brick from brick. Often we even find trees growing in the ruins as if they had been there for years."

Upon entering the quest, the player gets something like "It appears the town has grown too large and awakened the wrath of the trees." Inside we find a foresty level with # monsters. (poison ivy, the other stationary tree monster and a few huorns. The huorns would have to be spread out though so that they didn't all attack right at once and destroy the player. The traps would be the poison vine trap and perhaps the stone rolling traps. Boss would be a druid. He could summon nature monsters, could cast a spell to level any nature monsters he had already summoned, and perhaps could even change into an animal once, maybe some elemental spells..(?)

The reward would be a tome with a nature ability like "entangle," or "grow vines" (to break line-of-sight)

[Shoob]

the barrow downs are actually planned I think, just not really a side quest, but one of the hobbit's quests.

thieves quests:

if you accept to join the thieves/assassins you will randomly get ambushed in the wilderness by a caravan which contains merchants, guards, etc or a regiment of armed guards.

the game keeps track of the gold you earn from this, and returning to the assassin lord (rename him to bandit king???) you lose 75% of your gold from the encounter (keep in mind there will have to be several things here to record info (total earned and deducted gold), if deducted gold < total earned * 0.75 then deduct 0.75 * total earned - deducted gold from the players gold and adjust deducted gold accordingly). To compensate for this "tax" there will be promotions (which could be used for scoring later?). When promoted you gain a random ego item... "goodness" depends on promotion level (maybe an artifact for the last promotion?)

drawbacks:
- merchant dies/rare object store gone
- as you get promoted, odds of finding armed guards instead of a caravan increase (that is, you have a larger bounty on your head)
- as you get promoted, you cannot enter villages without a disguise (new armor or a sustained talent?), even with it on you have a chance of being seen each turn. If you are discovered, leveled armed guards appear in the village and shops close or something.

[madmonk]

Ten Fingers Quest

You meet a Mage who has lost all his fingers and wants them back (taken from this story by Roald Dahl)!

Go find them and return them... Only one problem, the person he lost them to has scattered them in the dungeons...

Reward? A Staff? A Ring?

[darkgod]

AHAHAHAHAH madmonk, now we REALLY could call him "fumblefingers"

I like those ideas, the thieves one is neat !
Gwai and burb ones are more like "mini games" which is good too.

What about:
You enter a level and encounter a friendly mage/warrior/wilder/... (based on your unlocks) that is wounded and you must escort him to a "safety portal" somewhere (far) on the level. He would have not too much life and be quite weak but if you manage to save him he teahes you one skill, aka Fumblefungers V2 !
Having him with you would sometimes trigger random patrols tryign to get him maybe too

[Taxorgian]

Perhaps a better approach to the 'needing help' thing is that he needs some healing from you (say a potion of healing or a potion of cure disease). If you then keep him alive until you reach the upstairs s/he gives you one of these:

An ego item you can use (small chance at an artifact), with the highest quality you can equip (if appropriate)
2d[Character level] or 8 gp whichever is greater
1d2 free skill points
1d2 free talent points
1 free category point
1 skill category (unlocked?) you don't have and not race-locked

[Shoob]

how about a shop in both bree and minas tirith (and the other towns when they are implemented).

this shop is a caravan master, he assigns quests to guard a caravan to reach the caravan master in another city. gold payout is based on distance to the other city as well as # of hostiles killed and # of friendlies lost.

if you lose too many friendlies your reward is decreased for the rest of the game. if you lose the entire caravan, you cant do it again. if you do it multiple times and not lose any merchants, then your reward is increased for the rest of the game.

promotions could occur here too as well as demotions (based on friendly people killed). ego rewards could apply here too.

[Baker]

how about a shop in both bree and minas tirith (and the other towns when they are implemented).

this shop is a caravan master, he assigns quests to guard a caravan to reach the caravan master in another city. gold payout is based on distance to the other city as well as # of hostiles killed and # of friendlies lost.

if you lose too many friendlies your reward is decreased for the rest of the game. if you lose the entire caravan, you cant do it again. if you do it multiple times and not lose any merchants, then your reward is increased for the rest of the game.

promotions could occur here too as well as demotions (based on friendly people killed). ego rewards could apply here too.

Sounds good. Fallout did something similar, you'd protect a caravan from one town to another and get into a number of random battles on the way. The better you guard everything, the more you get paid.

[bio_hazard]

Quest for melee characters: The Traveling Blacksmith

You meet a blacksmith on the world map (or could be in a town)

His small traveling forge can not produce enough heat to make fine armor and weapons. Bring him 2 ego lanterns, and he can use the enchantments in those lanterns to make full use of his magical forge, anvil and hammer.

Reward: Enchant armor or weapon of choice.

Weapon + to Dam, Acc, and APR
Armor + to defense, armor

[darkgod]

Sounds good!
Keep them coming!

[Taxorgian]

If the Merchant Quest was successful, when you visit the merchant in Minas Tirith. He offers a quest -- there is a training site for orc bandits near the mountains to the east. Go in and kill the leader, who will drop a bloody tattered scroll, listing the next targets he intended to raid. Return the scroll to the merchant and he gives you a reward of 40 gp, and you get a 50% discount in all shops from then on and any single item in his shop.